This week's focus was the forest floor at the base of the orchid.

The porcelain orchid grows in the mountainous terrain of Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park. It’s a small plant, maybe 8 inches high, and the flowers veined with a startling deep blue-green.

This week, I painted the detritus and roots at the base of the plant. The last time I worked on this piece, I painted a lot of detailed little rootlets. Now I’ve decided it’s better to evoke a messy forest floor with loose washy shapes, rather than a squiggly, hard-edged tangle.

I'm painting the negative shapes to define the leaf litter on the forest floor.

What do you think?

I've reached the halfway milestone on this complex illustration!

Monday afternoon I stepped back from the painting table and realized I had completed half of this illustration of a hamadryad butterfly. Well, I’d better not fall over patting myself on the back!

Onward!

Completed watercolor of Strelitzia

After pumping up the orange and blue values in the bracts and petals, I found the blue petal in front had lost its values. A few touches of Chinese white in the highlights and a stroke of ultramarine in the foremost shadow, and the painting is finished!

So my goal for today was to finish this watercolor of Stelitzia that I began over the weekend. Here you can see it as it was at 7:30 this morning (it’s a square, slightly wider than an A4 sheet):

Strelitzia at 0730 hours

Then I went off and did my morning routine, coming back to the studio at 10:30 Here is the painting at about 11:00 am:

Strelitzia, 1100 hours

As you can see, I’m working all over the painting, not allowing any one area to become more “finished” than another.

I worked til about a quarter past noon, then took a lunch break. Here the painting is at 1 pm:

Strelitzia at 1300 hours

At this point, the stem is more defined.

I finally laid off for the day at 3 pm (there’s ironing to do, oh boy!). Here’s the final shot of the day.

Strelitzia at 1500 hours

The orange bracts are gaining dimension. I still need to define the blue petals and stamens, the “pod” from where the flowers and bracts spring, and finish the stem and pod with the odd bluish “bloom” that covers this particular specimen.

I didn’t achieve the goal of finishing the painting, but I am pretty excited by having gotten more done in 1 day on a botanical piece than I have managed before.

© 2010, Wren M. Allen, Wrenaissance Art

Last week’s progress on this bromeliad painting: definition of shading and striping on the exterior side of the leaves, plus increased definition of the roots.

©2009 Wren M. Allen, Wrenaissance Art

I’ve been working on this botanical illustration of a porcelain orchid from Chile’s Patagonia region for quite a few months now. I laid it aside while in the botanical illustration course at the Jardim, and have just returned to it in the last few weeks.

©2009 Wren M. Allen, Wrenaissance Art

The bromeliad illustration after yesterday’s session. It looks a bit squashed from the tilted angle of my work table and the camera.

Santa's workshop

I’ll be having Christmas lunch with my Art Chicks on Wednesday. It’ll be a farewell lunch as well , as I think we’ll be moving before the painting class starts up again in late Feb. I’m making some little panorama format sketchbooks for the ladies, using my Fabriano hot press w/c paper and some chipboard and scrapbooking sheets from the local scrapbook album shop. More pix to come!

(BTW: gifts in Brazilian Portuguese is “presentes” and is pronounced “pruh SEN chees”. And who doesn’t like that?

©2009 Wren M. Allen, Wrenaissance Art

Botanical illustration of a bromeliad after the initial washes have been laid in. As progress continues, I’ll post later stages.

Illustration for one of Gianni Rodari's Fables for Telephone, © Wren M. Allen

Sketched this out Friday.